it’s refreshing to see a book on project management that spends as much time on human factors…This book is a candid and honest piece of work.

Just as the fact that we know where we are going does not help us find the best path when we come to an unknown fork in the road, knowing our requirements does not tell us anything about what decisions to make when we must choose between several solutions. To continue learning, we must resist the temptation to succumb to the safe and narrow visions concerning what we are doing. I have received impressions about this book and I think it is a good roadmap to encourage future Project Managers. Which is fine if you want to avoid drama and internal strife but really bad if you actually want things to get done. Keep the vision alive** by asking questions about the usefulness of the vision and about the daily decisions of the project.Ego/No-ego: The ego can be a driver for managers, who often derive great personal satisfaction from their work. Leadership and management are also difficult, but their nature – making it so that things happen in a specific way towards a specific objective – is simple.

A checklist might help those people do the work in a way that meets the goal, but the checklist is not the goal either.

Despite the poor education that we have in the modern world to use our talents well, they are there. Every chapter ends with a list of exercises – extremely relevant – to reflect on the subjects dealt with and put them into practice. If the requirement states “there shall be a door and it shall be green,” everyone who is going to conceive how to complete the project is going to think of different kinds of green doors. Once it was clear how popular the text was going to be, O’Reilly and Berkun took out some of the superfluous bits, added in over 120 exercises and generally spruced it up to launch it into the best-seller list. What is most distressing is not the different points of view; it is the fact that very often they’re written as if the other points of view didn’t exist.

The trick is to be mindful, to pay attention to yourself, your environment and how you are spending your time. The latter part of the book is all about keeping the momentum and tidying up when you are finished including a chapter on managing office politics. The requirements definition process is difficult, but there are some good reference books on how to do it. Why was Humphrey Bogart's screen presence and persona so vital a factor for American morale during World War II? Many then admitted (after looking over their shoulder to be sure no-one was listening) that it’s impossible to always follow a formal process for decision making, given the limited time that they have available and the number of things that they need to do.PMI, the PMI logo, REP logo, PMP, PMBOK, OPM3 and CAPM are registered marks of The Project Management Institute, Inc. Ich würde dem Buch wahrscheinlich sogar eine 5/5 geben, könnte ich es 100% auf mein Arbeitsumfeld anwenden. Moreover, in general, project planning success is arrived at in the intersection between the different points of view.

Scott Berkun is an author and speaker who has worked at Microsoft for 9 years as a project manager going from Internet Explorer, Windows and MSN. Divide the LEGOs into two piles, putting the same number and the same types of pieces into each pile. The Art of Project Management covers it all from practical methods for making sure work gets done right and on time, to the mind set that can make you a great leader motivating your team to do their best. While the book is well-written and structured, it feels like a nice long talk with someone who is being completely honest about the way things work. However, managers must avoid placing their own interests above those of the project and must delegate important and fun tasks, and share the rewards.

Invest time in the design phase to highlight the assumptions made and the confidence that has been placed in them. Defining the exit criteria at the beginning of the milestone **increases the ability of the team to finish on time**. Unfortunately, it also makes the book a bit boring and encourages skipping a paragraph here and there. Its a solution kit for succeeding at software projects and I plan to keep it by my side as a reference and re-read in the future. This gets into some very specific application, such as putting prototypes together and getting in front of people, which I think will seem natural to anyone in an Agile environment.